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Terror reverberates through me—partly because I don’t want Hudson or me to go to prison or die (obviously) and partly because it’s becoming clearer and clearer that we’re not in control of anything. None of us is. Instead, Cyrus holds all the power here.
“So we need to think of something. You’re safe for a few more weeks, until graduation, but after that, it’s open season,” Mekhi says. “There has to be a way to stop this before then.”
“Of course there is,” Hudson tells him with a sarcastic twist of his lips. “I’ll do what I should have done on that field and end Cyrus once and for all.”
“And spend the rest of your life in prison for his murder?” I demand, my hands on my hips. “You can’t do that.”
He doesn’t answer, and that’s when my fear ratchets straight up to full-blown terror. Because the look in his eyes says it all. One way or another, Hudson is going to put an end to his father’s ability to threaten us…to threaten me…or die trying.
Just the thought of losing him makes my hands shake and my heart beat way too fast. There has to be another way. There has to be. We can’t just—
And that’s when it hits me.
“What about the Crown?” I whisper.
Fee-Fi-Phobia
“The Crown?” Mekhi looks confused. “You won’t get that until the coronation after graduation—”
“No, not the one I get for being gargoyle queen. The one the Bloodletter told us about today. It’s been missing, but it can—” I break off when Rafael starts laughing.
“You think you can find the Crown?” he asks when he finally stops laughing. “Some of the most powerful creatures in existence have searched for that Crown for centuries, and you think we can just conjure it up?” He laughs again, even as he shakes his head. “It might have been true once, but at this point, it’s just an old vampires’ tale.”
“It’s not,” Hudson tells him flatly. “The Crown is real.”
“Because the Bloodletter told you so?” Rafael challenges him.
“Because I’ve spent the last two centuries listening to Cyrus obsess about it. My father is a lot of things, but he is no sucker. If it didn’t exist—if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes—he wouldn’t have cared so much about uncovering it.”
“And you think you can find it?” Liam interjects. “As you say, the vampire king himself has been searching for it for centuries, and you think you’re just going to walk right up to it?”
“I didn’t say that,” I tell him, smarting a little from being made fun of. “I know it won’t be easy. But none of this is easy, and the Bloodletter pointed us in the right direction—”
“She told you where it is?” Jaxon asks, and forget cold. Now his voice is absolutely frigid, the look on his face as blank as any I’ve ever seen from him. “Why would she do that?”
I glance at Hudson before I can stop myself, and he subtly shakes his head at me. I understand where he’s coming from—I’m not exactly up for airing all our baggage in front of the entire Order, either—but when I turn back to Jaxon, it’s obvious he’s seen the entire interaction. And he’s not happy.
Still, he must not be all that excited about showing off our differences in front of everyone, either, because he doesn’t call us on it. Instead, he glosses over his first question and moves on to, “So what did she tell you? Where’s the Crown?”
“She doesn’t know,” I answer after a second. “But she told us who she thinks does. The Unkillable Beast.”
“The Unkillable Beast?” Mekhi asks incredulously. He looks like he thinks it over for a second before shaking his head. “You don’t think that sounds a little questionable? She did just send you there a few weeks ago to kill it. Why didn’t she mention it before you went?”
“She didn’t need to mention it then—” I start to explain.
“And she needed to mention it now?” He sounds so skeptical, and when he says it like that, I don’t blame him. Like, yeah, last time we talked to her, none of us had any idea I’d end up mated to Hudson and want to break that bond. But still. It’s a good point. Especially when I consider Hudson’s mistrust of her.
It’s hard to trust anyone who doles information out on a when-she-wants-to-tell-you basis.
“Why does the Bloodletter do anything?” Hudson snaps at him, and this time he’s definitely showing some fang. “I don’t think anyone is going to dispute that she has her own agenda, whether we know what that agenda is or not. Besides, the Crown isn’t a faction artifact. It couldn’t do anything for us last time, as it wouldn’t have worked in the spell Grace performed. And I think we can all agree, there was never a chance we would actually kill the beast before, so she likely felt nothing risked.” He shrugs.
“And you think the Crown can do something for us now? Really?” Luca sounds as skeptical as Mekhi.
“I don’t know.” I throw my hands up in defeat. “It was a bad idea. I panicked at the thought of Hudson getting arrested and—”
“Don’t do that,” Hudson growls, and for the first time since Jaxon and the Order got here, he steps forward to put himself just a little bit in front of me. “You don’t need to make excuses to him,” he continues with a searing look at the other vampires in the room.
I start to inch up, just in case I have to put myself between two aggressive vampires, but Jaxon moves forward at the same time. And Liam falls back immediately.
“Why the Unkillable Beast?” he asks, gaze once again moving between Hudson and me. “Why does she think he knows where the Crown is? And even if he once did, does she know what kind of shape he’s in now? I know you can hear him in your head, Grace, but do you really think he’s capable of having a full conversation with you, let alone able to tell you where the Crown is hidden?”
It’s a good point, one I’ve thought about a lot since the Bloodletter warned us we’d have to find the Blacksmith first. “Once we break his shackles, he’ll get better,” I tell Jaxon. “She says it’s the enchanted chains that have made him like this. They were never meant to be worn this long.”
“We already tried to break those chains,” he reminds me. “It didn’t work.”
“That’s why we’re supposed to find someone called the Blacksmith. He’s the one who made the chains.”
“And where is he?” Jaxon asks, both brows lifted.
“We start with the giants,” Hudson replies.
“The giants?” I ask, totally surprised by his suggestion. If I’ve learned anything over the past few weeks, it’s that Hudson always has a reason for what he says and does, but I have no idea what that reason might be here.
The Bloodletter never mentioned giants at all—and neither has he—which makes me wonder where he’s coming from now. Though I have to admit the idea of getting to see where they live is both exhilarating and daunting. Like, are we talking huge beanstalks? And if so, how exactly do they hide them from passing airplanes and NASA satellites?
“They’re known for their metalwork,” Luca explains quietly. “And it’s actually a pretty good idea to start with them.” He sounds surprised.
I expect Hudson to be annoyed, but he just rolls his eyes and snarks, “Damned by faint praise.”
Apparently, Jaxon isn’t the only one who likes to misquote Hamlet…
“Is there a particular place to find great metalworking giants?” I ask, my gaze moving from vampire to vampire. But no one seems to want to answer me, so I huff. “Or should I just look for a giant beanstalk somewhere?”
Luca snickers, but Hudson looks clueless. “I’m not sure giants grow beans there but—”
“I don’t mean actual beanstalks.” I make a face at him. “I mean like Jack and the Beanstalk. You know. With the magic beans.”
He still looks clueless.
“The beans grow into a huge beanstalk that goes all the way to the sky? And this boy climbs it, only to find a giant at the top?” He’s still shaking his head like he has no idea what I’m talking about, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little shocked. He’s literally read just about everything, but he’s somehow missed out on the most basic fairy tales? How is that possible?
“Never mind,” I tell him with a shake of my head. “It’s not important.”
He looks like he wants to say more, but Jaxon says, “Let me get this straight.” He looks between Hudson and me. “You want us to chase after a maybe mythical, maybe not giant in a city of giants in hopes of finding out how to break the chains on the Unkillable Beast in the hopes that he might know how to find this all-powerful Crown?”
Not going to lie, it sounds a little absurd when he puts it like that. “I don’t know that that’s what I want,” I tell him after a second. “I do know that I don’t want to be in a full-out war with your father—”
“Too late for that,” Hudson interrupts with a snort.